The e-Library of Greek Byzantine Manuscripts. Application in the Sources Chrétiennes Collection

Abstract

Although the Byzantine Empire fell, it continues to exist thanks to its ability of selfprojecting onto its cultural heritage, especially onto texts written during its period. Text Collections are excellent projects for preserving historical manuscripts. Ι focus on series of Greek-Byzantine manuscripts, especially on the well-known Sources Chrétiennes collection. This is a bilingual series, containing Greek texts (50% of its content) and an important source for researchers of Byzantine era. Thus I have initiated the construction of this collection’s e-library, which can be a subset of the overall e-library of Greek- Byzantine manuscripts. The construction of an e-library has proved to be extremely useful. Indeed, a huge variety of analyses reveals inherent structures, identities etc. In this presentation I demonstrate those elements referring to the layer structure of the collection with respect to Greek texts (analysis of thematic content, author, title). Thus a critical insight into the realm of Greek-Byzantine manuscripts is obtained.